


Testimonials

by quenchycactus



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-29
Updated: 2015-08-29
Packaged: 2018-04-17 21:19:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4681853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quenchycactus/pseuds/quenchycactus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The trial is long, and terrible, and Freddie Lounds publishes a paper labeling them ‘murder husbands,’ and Hannibal almost chuckles.  Almost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Testimonials

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this real quick after fully registering that Will actually had to testify against Hannibal, and thinking about how horrible that must have been for the both of them.
> 
> Also on [tumblr](http://quenchycactus.tumblr.com/post/127872005120/testimonials)

Will is having a panic attack.  He can’t do this, he doesn’t  _want_  to do this.  He can’t see Hannibal again, not after everything, not now, and Jack isn’t just making Will  _look_  at Hannibal, he’s making Will  _testify against him._

It was lies, all of it lies, what he’d said to Hannibal.  He misses him, terribly, enough that it is eating him alive.  He would have probably looked for him, too, again.  But Hannibal had turned himself in, a huge “Fuck you” to Will’s second and equally insincere rejection.

He’d wanted to go with Hannibal, but there is still a large portion of himself that has  _morals_  and those morals would not let him go anywhere, would not let Will have the thing he craved.

So he’d lied, and hoped to God he would never have to see Hannibal again, because that would make it so much harder.

Will throws up in the court’s bathroom toilet.  Nothing has ever worked out for him how he’d wanted, or hoped, or wished.

He doesn’t know how he is supposed to testify against a man he’d almost gone on a runaway murdering spree with, a man he wants and understands and who made him like this.  Hannibal brought this out in him, and Will cannot shove it back in any more than he can shove down the anxiety overflowing in his stomach.

___________

Will is going to testify against him.

Part of Hannibal is smug; Will is not getting what he wanted now, nor will he ever, a just punishment for ripping what Hannibal wanted out of his hands, not once, but  _twice_.

The other part is, admittedly, hurt.  Very hurt.

Not by the act of testimony, because Hannibal knows that it’s Jack’s hand forcing Will.  It’s Will’s words still ringing around his head that burn like poison.

Hannibal is almost sure Will meant none of them, but he still was unable to let himself go, let himself be who he truly is.  Rejection rots in Hannibal’s gut, building on the first knot that had settled there months before, when Will had thrown Hannibal’s gift in his face and spat in it.

This testimony will not be pleasant; the pleasure Hannibal will get from Will’s distress and discomfort is only just going to balance his own ache.  Still, Hannibal will make sure to drive his stake as far through Will’s heart as he possibly can.

Hannibal braces himself, trying to free his own pierced heart of another stake, one covered in Will’s fingerprints.

____________

The trial is long, and terrible, and Freddie Lounds publishes a paper labeling them ‘murder husbands,’ and Hannibal almost chuckles.  Almost.

Will reads the same paper and immediately becomes sick to his stomach.  If he thinks about it for too long he realizes  _regret_  is the source of the nausea, and guilt at this realization adds a new layer of sickness.

Hannibal is never able to remove his stake, but he becomes used to the pain.  Will never visits, and pretends the piercing in his own heart doesn’t exist.  In this way he is able to love someone else, to love Molly.

And it’s not the same, it’s not all-encompassing, but it’s genuine and it’s enough.  It has to be.

Three years pass and wounds are scabbing over but still relatively fresh, when something comes to scratch them off.

Francis Dolarhyde digs his new claws deep into the FBI and Jack calls on Will, calls on Hannibal, and the pair fall into the same, messy rut.  It’s dark and toxic but it’s  _theirs_  and they cannot climb out.  They’ve learned to love it inside; under the muck it becomes something warm and addictive.  They find their old selves, and their old feelings, which were never truly old as they never got buried more than a few layers down, covered with powder-dry dirt ready to fly away at the first gust of a storm.

They shoot off their bombs from their trench, and everyone in the blast radius suddenly remembers the horror that is their love.


End file.
